I will construct an artificial girl whose anatomy will make possible physically to recreate the dizzy heights of passion and to do so to the extent of creating new desires. (Hans Bellmer) A Surrealist painter, draughtsman and sculptor, Hans Bellmer photographed only sporadically and regarded the medium as a purely functional means of articulating other artistic and philosophical preoccupations. His photographs of dolls in various guises appeared in small, limited edition volumes, often accompanied by eloquent texts or poetry by Surrealist writers to enhance or "explain" the imagery. Bellmer found direct inspiration for his work in Weimar and post-Weimar Berlin, where dolls and mannequins proliferated in the visual and performance arts. He collaborated, for example, with Max Reinhardt in his 1933 theater production of E.T.A. Hoffman's The Sandman, which featured a female automaton. Bellmer also rearticulated the Surrealist motif of the mannequin, present in the work of De Chirico and Max Ernst and later, in turn, inspired a number of artists. The 1938 Surrealist exhibition in Paris included a number of dolls made by various artists such as Salvador Dali, André Masson and Meret Oppenheim. In 1934, at his own expense, Bellmer published Die Puppe (the Doll). In this volume of ten photographs, the doll is shown in various configurations, from the purely anatomical or "mechanistic," to a fleshier, adolescent seductress with a range of fetishistic props. Bellmer himself even appears with his creation in one of the plates. A French version, La Poupée, appeared two years later. Actually begun in 1936-1937, but delayed by the war, Bellmer's second doll series, Les Jeux de la Poupée (Games of the Doll) was eventually published in Paris in November 1949. The book included 15 hand-colored gelatin silver prints of a remodeled, ball-jointed doll (about which Bellmer wrote an introductory note) and 14 prose poems by Paul Éluard to "illustrate" the images. Les Jeux was a far more sophisticated enterprise. Bellmer embarked on a "game" of assembling and disassembling the sexual identity of his creation, placing her in settings - domestic and outdoor - that established a heightened sense of drama. While some plates are very erotically charged, others suggest foreboding or menace. In the Freud-inspired world of Surrealism, Bellmer succeeded in transforming his camera, generally used to record the tangible, into a means of describing the intangible - the nature of desire. His photographs can be regarded as a precursor of conceptual art in so far as the pictorial account of making the artifact eventually replaced the artifact itself. Hans Bellmer's volumes are rarely available complete. Lots 165 and 166, however, are from the (French) 1936 and 1949 editions respectively. Both volumes have been rebound to preserve the integrity of Bellmer's original covers. Lot 165 (Les Jeux de la Poupée) also includes two rare, limited edition publications by Bellmer, the 3 Tableaux, 7 Dessins, I Texte, 1944 and Vingt-Cinq Réproductions - 1934-1950, 1950, as well as two letters written by Bellmer in January 1954 to an unidentified recipient - possibly his publisher or printer.

HANS BELLMER (1902-1975)

La Poupée

Details

HANS BELLMER (1902-1975)
La Poupée
Paris: G.L.M., 1936. Ten gelatin silver prints, bound in a volume. Each approximately 4 5/8 x 3in. (11.7 x 7.6cm.) Title page; text, Souvenirs Relatifs à la Poupée by Bellmer, translated into French by Robert Valen^cay; and colophon, number stamped 62. One of an edition of 105 (numbers 26-100 on "papier rose"). Modern binding with slipcase.

Provenance

With Sims Reed, London;
to the present owner.

Literature

See: University of Illinois, Krannert Art Museum, Hans Bellmer, Photographs, pp. 9, 11 and 12-13.

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